Agreement Between Carrea's Odontological Method and De Mendonça's Osteometric Method for Stature Estimation: A Study...

This study evaluates the agreement between Carrea's (1920) odontological method and De Mendonça's (2000) osteometric method for estimating height in archaeological skeletal remains from an Al-Andalus necropolis (10th-12th centuries) discovered in Zaragoza. Twenty-seven individuals (16 men, 11 women) were selected who had the femur, medial and lateral incisors, as well as the mandibular canine, fully preserved. The results showed that at the population level, both methods provide similar mean estimates of height (mean Bland-Altman differences close to zero). However, at the individual level, agreement was poor: the 95% limits of agreement reached approximately ±25 cm, and both the Lin concordance correlation coefficient (CCC = 0.140-0.156) and the Pearson cross-correlations (r = 0.156-0.171, non-significant) confirmed a weak linear relationship between the two methods. Furthermore, it was found that dental wear correlates negatively and significantly with Carrea's estimates (r = -0.428; p = 0.026), suggesting that it constitutes a source of bias specific to this method. Greater dispersion of Carrea's estimates was also observed in males, possibly linked to their higher degree of dental wear. These results indicate that although Carrea's method may be useful for estimating the average height of a population, its applicability as an individual estimator is limited.